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14/09/2006

Between Hitler and Ahmadinejad

Michael Holmes

September 5, 2006

We should have done everything to prevent the Holocaust. What about stopping Tehran?

The world is in agreement that we should have done everything to prevent the Holocaust. That makes it all the stranger that people so rarely speak about what the events of that time would look like, if this had been the fortunate case.

If the Allies had defeated Germany in 1938-39, the world would have long since lost any particular interest in this period. Only a handful of Leftists would recall, at every opportunity, the 500,000 who died in the war. Germany’s development after this war would be just as indifferent to them as the existence of a democratic South Korea is to them today. What is prevented, remains invisible forever.

We can’t say with certainty whether today is 1938. But we know that our enemies view it that way. The regime in Tehran is convinced that it is fighting for things much more important than power or money.

The mullahs see themselves in a position of strength. They know very well that the United States is sufficiently tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also know that all Western governments must take into consideration an electorate that, at the latest since the experience in Iraq, will be very hard to persuade to conduct another military intervention.

They know that a West that castigates itself for every killed civilian cannot wage war against a country of Iran’s size and strength. And they know that the people in the Western countries have a terrible fear of the mullahs’ merciless revenge.

This is why it is idle speculation to ask whether the mullahs, if pressed, would place their fundamentalist delusions above their immediate interests or could be moved to at least partial concessions. They have no reason to do so.

What Tehran knows

Tehran knew it could begin the war against Israel. They have experienced that it entails no consequences when they publicly call for the destruction of Israel and make no bones about their support for Hizbullah and Hamas.

There is only one point on which they sometimes feign willingness to negotiate, in order to win time: Their nuclear program. We do not have the slightest reason to doubt that they are feverishly working on an atom bomb. If there is anything holding Tehran back at all, then it is the time it needs to complete this weapon.

The West is currently paralyzed with fear, but Tehran is afraid that this could turn into courage and engagement. This is the reason why they have played the trump card of Hizbullah.

Everything currently happening in Lebanon is in Tehran’s interest: a democracy potentially friendly to the West is being turned into a war zone; the world’s attention is distracted from Iran’s nuclear program; Israeli troops are tied down; and the human shield tactic leads to the arch-enemy’s condemnation by deceived world opinion.

Is it imaginable that the West would acquiesce as nuclear weapons come into the possession of a regime that again and again has called for the destruction of a democratic state and that has long since begun randomly murdering that state’s citizens?

Learn from Mao

Yes, it is possible. And it wouldn’t be the first time in human history. Mao Tse-Tung, the man who murdered 70 million people in times of peace, not only had atomic weapons, he also tested them. And he, too, repeatedly made it clear what he wanted them for.

The Great Revolutionary Leader wanted to wage total atomic war against America, Europe, and Israel. He was willing to sacrifice “a third of humankind” in order to defeat “imperialism”, and he ridiculed the “revisionist” Khrushchev for not being willing. What saved humankind from the apocalypse at that time?

The answer is as simple as it is terrifying: The inability of the Chinese military to build intercontinental rockets. In other words: Luck.

Michael Holmes is a German-American from Berlin, and a member of the neoconservative "Friends of open society" Bloggerteam